In the winding of rolls of a web material, depending upon the material characteristics and/or previous production or rerolling requirements, printed or coated webs may have to be wound so that one or the other side is turned inwardly or outwardly in the roll being wound on a winding sleeve or core.
In the European Patent Document EP A2 0 132 390, for example, a turret winding machine is described in which the cores are carried upon a turret and an empty core is positioned at a winding location and displaced therefrom as a roll is wound thereon. A swing arm can engage the web between the roll and the winding location from one side or an opposite side to apply the cut end of the web to the empty core in one or the opposite sense, thereby selectively enabling the roll to be wound with one or the other side turned inwardly or outwardly as required. The swing arm here is mounted on a turret to enable it in one position to swing from above and in another position to swing from below into engagement with the web.
One of the problems with this system, apart from the complexity of the swing arm assembly, is that the web must be fed to the winding location over different guide rollers depending upon the direction in which it is to be wound on the core and, consequently, considerable service time is required to set up a machine for a change in the winding direction, significant lengths of web may be wasted, and the interruption in production may be for significant durations.